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Tuesday, 24 May 2016

Federal Government begins process of appointing ambassadors to represent Nigeria

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, on Tuesday said the Federal Government had begun the process of appointing a new set of ambassadors to represent Nigeria in various countries of the world.

Onyeama stated this at a news conference to mark one year anniversary of President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration.

The 26 non-career ambassadors and ambassadors extraordinary and plenipotentiary on tour of duty abroad were recalled in June 2015.

They were among the 93 envoys posted out in 2012.

The minister explained that the reason for the delay in their appointment was that the current administration wanted to do a thorough job to ensure that very competent hands were sent out.

“It is a work in progress; it is being done and may be in short time we will have the list of ambassadors going to various countries.

“Sometimes, it is on the approach of getting the best hands.

“So we want to be very clear of the ones we send out to represent the country; we want to be sure we have representations that will reflect real vision of this government,” he said.

He said that government was set to implement all the agreements signed with various countries to achieve the goal of signing such pacts.

Onyeama said that government had set up an inter-ministerial committee to work on them, to ensure effective implementation of the agreement.

“So far, what we have done is to set up inter-ministerial committee and identified all the follow up actions and set up timeline for them.’’

The minister added that government had identified the ministries, departments and agencies that would be responsible for different aspects of what was required in the agreement.

“That is a very concrete follow up mechanism put in place to actualise the agreements,’’ he said.